Session 04
= Game date = March 5, 2011 = Game notes = GM appreciation day was recently, so yay, pie! = Game log = Library Dr. Russel continues at the library, checking on the green idols. The closest thing he can find is from some obscure references in various African tribes. They appear along with the most ancient creation stories, but these stories have been supplanted by the more modern, still existing mythologies. There's a mention of some sort of creator deity. There are similar fragmented references to the other idol. April 10th Dr. Russel and Ms. Grey return to Boston. Meanwhile, Luo, Owen, and Thomas continue to spy on the Lexington expedition. Lexington's father was a shipping magnate, so they have their own private warehouse. Their warehouse is actually guarded. Owen tries to get inside to look by first pretending to be someone looking for day labor, then by trying to bribe his way past the guard. When that fails, he goes looking for a bar with sailors to try to befriend. * Brendan *making small talk* What ship are you sailing on? * NPC: The Gabrielle. * Brendan: It's a beautiful ship. (Get fucked.) Eventually, he finds a sailor prepping the ship and chats him up. He asks if he can sneak him on board to take a look at the ship since he's a naval buff. Between a lot of drinks and a lucky Charm roll, he gets to take the sailor back with him. He sneaks around the ship looking for Lexington's quarters by picking up something and looking like he has a place to go. He finds a likely cabin, but nothing's really been moved in, so no luck digging up info on the expedition. Meanwhile, Luo stakes out the warehouse for a day. Evening Eventually, everyone meets back at the warehouse for dinner. Moore announces that he have a new captain: Captain Vredenburgh. He's not yet present, as he is still travelling to arrive here. There's a yellow journalism article by Guy Hawks on the former captain's travels to the Amazon. Evey got a message from her mother saying that no one she knows knows about Joan. No response from Lexington about meeting with Evey either. Luo decides to read the diary that DeWinter had. DeWinter has returned home to deal with family issues. Breaking and entering Owen and Luo are breaking into Lexington's warehouse to check on whether they stole any of our goods. Luo, unfortunately, fails at sneaking and acts as a distraction. Owen sneaks around a bit and breaks into the office. He got the manifest, the ship passenger list. Security notices that the door was broken into, so he has to hide under a tarp. Owen sets the warehouse on fire as a distraction as he makes an escape. He slides the warehouse manifests and crew lists under Dr. Russel's door. April 11th Next morning, there's a report in the paper of arson at the Lexington warehouse. Starkweather makes an appearance, saying that there's a detective who will be speaking to everyone after breakfast -- Detective Hanson. * Dr. Russel when asked does admit that there's a rivalry between Starkweather and Lexington, and he doesn't care for women on these kind of adventures and that he had to argue for his assistants to come. * Ms. Grey claims to nothing about the animosity or the history being from overseas. * Mr. Matheson acknowledges the rivalry but doesn't know much about it. He also suggests that the detective could ask the front desk clerk to corroborate that he didn't leave. * Mr. Lynch claims he was in his room playing cribbage with Lou. (Pulls off the Bluff check.) He further says the animosity between the two is probably two rich people pissing each other off. * Luo claims he was playing cribbage with the "big dumb cowboy" -- Owen, to be specific. There's nothing all that interesting in the notes the party now has. It looks like Lexington is actually going on the kind of expedition up the river that she publicly claims to be on. April 12th Luo keeps an eye on Lexington's warehouse. She comes in an out a bit. There were no messages for Evey. April 13th In the papers, philanthropist Nicholas Roerich, who was in town for a charitable event, was kidnapped outside of Acacia Lexington's estate. He was taken to a warehouse in the dock district, where he was found. He is recovering in the hospital and will be released today. The police are looking for a number of men, and the description of one resembles Captain Douglas's assailant. Starkweather and Moore give everyone their lodging assignments. Evey and Joan are assigned one of the two double cabins next to Starkweather and Moore. Everyone else is in triple cabins: * Owen is with the expeditionaries. * Thomas is with the mechanic and engineer. * Clayton is with the scientists. * Luo is stuck with the laborers. The party loads the ship. Fire! Owen goes out drinking until around 1 AM. Clayton goes out researching leads on the two idols at Harvard until 10 PM, when the library closes. Luo goes out wandering until 11:30 PM. Evey and Thomas are the only two on the ship at 10 PM when the loading of stuff on board comes to a halt with the sound of an explosion from the dockside. Fire has broken out amongst the fuel tanks still on the dock. Burning gasoline streams out across the docks and pouring into the water near the Arkham. (The fuel was the last thing unloaded.) Starkweather tries to take control of the situation and to get people to get the drums on the boat and on the loading crane away from the fire before they catch too. He gets slugged by a fleeing teamster who he tries to recruit to help. Thomas picks him up, then helps him use a fire hose to put things out. The crew of the ship are casting off to get away from the fire. Joan helps out with the fire hose while Evey attempts (and fails) to find others man enough to help. They try to wrangle a hose together but can't seem to hold it down. About 15 minutes into the blaze, the shed collapses in a showers of sparks. Evey and Joan attempt to lash the hose to the ship to keep it steady while they turn it onto the fire. Some more wacky hose hijinks happens. Thomas gets the hanging barrels safely onto the boat. Luo arrives and starts dragging people away from the fire and doing first aid. Dr. Russel arrives as the chaos continues. Firemen finally arrive to help put out the fires as the pier starts collapsing. There's not much for him left to do. He does notice, as time passes, that the Tallahassee is also being tugged into sea. It eventually leaves on its own. Aftermath: * The Arkham is relocated a few slips down. * It'll take a few days to replace the fuel; this further extends the launch date. * Starkweather is furious at the entire affair, and blames it all on Acacia Lexington. * He seems to have a greater appreciation of Thomas and grudging acceptance for Evey and Joan. * Reporters swarm with questions. * The teamsters are much more accepting of Luo for helping save one of them. Three did die, however. There is now much more security at the new location. Over the next few days... Thomas spends time with Starkweather. He's planning on rearranging some of the responsibilities on the ship and in the field. He's upset that "we'll never beat her there, now". He clams she can never let something go -- she was once on an expedition with him and couldn't handle that she wasn't up to the task. Starkweather liked her father, though -- took him out on safari a couple of times before. Clayton asks Moore about talking to the cops about the note. They agree not to because it would just cause more problems. April 16th In a more subdued ceremony, the ship gets towed out to sea, and they head off. Starkweather gives a speech: it's a three week trip to São Paulo. There will be classes given by some of the expeditioners. This includes training with the portage sleds and mosquito netting. Several scientists will be giving lectures on botany and entomology. There's also some generic advice: stay in shape and keep fit rather than relaxing, and eat well since food will be harder to get in the bush. Thomas will need to be in a class on how to setup and break down the radios. Owen will need to help run a class on the sledges and the mosquito tents. Clayton will run a class or two on anthropology. The daily schedule: * Breakfast is from 8 AM to 9 AM. * There's no formal lunch; instead, there's a cold buffet from 12 PM to 1 PM. * Starkweather has tea at 4 PM. * There's free time from 4 PM to 8 PM. * Dinner is at 8 PM. The mess hall has the position of the ship and the schedule of classes. At the end of the first week, as Thomas is doing the radio class, the two larger radios are not working. There are acid burns inside them; probably a battery malfunction. He manages to fix them. Same thing happens with the four small trail radio sets; Thomas fixes them too. (Owen, unfortunately, learns nothing.) Louie LaRoche, the dedicated radio tech, is impressed. Category:Session Logs